Thevenin Equivalents

Introduction:

Thevenin equivalents are useful in designing and analyzing variable load elements in a circuit. We can model a system using such analysis and prove that Thevenin equivalence is valid for a practical circuit. 

Objective:

The purpose of this lab is to use Thevenin equivalents to analyze a circuit that will carry an unknown load. We would also like to know the voltage that the load must carry and the power lost according to its Thevenin resistance.

Procedure:

In the first part we must determine an open circuit or Thevenin voltage to be used in the circuit shown below.

We found Voc to be 8.64V.

Next we found the voltage Vy in the circuit shown below.

 Using the previous two results we found the maximum load resistance that the circuit could hold.
















To test the theory of Thevenin equivalence in a practical application we set up a circuit like the one below and made measurements of the load resistance and Thevenin elements.

Conclusion:
In practice the Thevenin equivalent measurements were useful in setting up a loaded circuit and analyzing the output. The theorem only left a small percent error when performed experimentally. It could also further allow us to change the resistance if need be for different goals.